I first came across Rob's blog when I was getting back into Warhammer Fantasy. I was searching for information on Undead and Vampire Counts armies and Rob Hawkins Hobby was one of the first blogs that I found. After just a few minutes on the blog, I was a big fan and have been ever since. It is easy to see why.
As can be guessed from the title, Rob's blog is primarily focused on the painting and modelling side of the hobby.
Without a doubt, my favourite articles are his gaming board posts. Rob is fortunate enough to make a living from this hobby of ours, and builds commission gaming boards and dioramas for a wide range of games and companies. The majority of these he posts on his blog, along with some great work in progress shots and details of how he created them. To me, these boards look absolutely fantastic (you will see some of them in the article below, but be sure to check out the blog for a lot more). The WIP and details make them look so simple to make, though all with stunning end results, that I would love to try my hand at a few of them in the future.
Along with his terrain projects, Rob also has a whole host of great hobby content for his various armies. These include his Undead army,
Legion of the Infernal Skull, as well as some 40k content, most recently his work towards assembling a
Sisters of Battle Kill Team for Shadow War: Armageddon. Most of his hobby posts will feature some form of converting and sculpting new parts for the models, as well as some fantastic paint jobs on the finished conversions.
Not only that, but Rob has recently started selling his own resin terrain kits at
Skull Forge Scenics. These are all terrain pieces that Rob designs and sculpts. While initially focused on terrain that would fit with an army of the undead (skulls, tombstones, graveyard walls), the range has started to expand into other areas. I hope we will get to see some great terrain and accessories that would fit in with a 40k battlefield at some point in the future.
If you haven't checked out
Rob Hawkins Hobby yet, do yourself a favour and add it to your blog list now.
Here are Rob's answers to my questions:
1. What age did you get into gaming and what started it off?
I got into gaming when I was in about fifth grade. Some of the older kids in my Boy Scouts troop were playing Dungeons & Dragons, so we all made characters and played through an adventure. I was immediately hooked, and continued playing D&D through middle school. When I went to high school, I made a new group of friends who were into all kinds of role-playing games– James Bond, Robotech, Call of Cthulu.
I was a huge Star Wars fan, and when West End Games released their Star Wars RPG, I immediately grabbed it, and that became our group's main focus throughout high school and college. As the resident artist, I drew pictures of all our characters, and even started chronicling the adventures in comic book form. West End also had a miniatures expansion, and I picked that up, planning to use Micro Machine Star Wars figures and tiny army men painted like our characters to play out larger battles. I started building hex tiles, textured with sand and lichen shrubbery. Our campaign never made the transition into a full miniatures game, but I had been bitten by the miniatures bug, and that love of building and painting models and scenery would stay with me forever. My friends and I had also dabbled in Blood Bowl during that time, but I saw it as more of a board game with neat figures than a proper miniatures game. I didn't even know what a "Games Workshop" was...yet.
In 1997, my friend John returned from his tour in the Army, and introduced me to Warhammer, which was in its 5th Edition at the time. That love of models and scenery took hold, and I was all-in. I picked up a box of skeletons, and the rest is history!
